The Dell XPS 13 Late 2016 (9360) is the fourth-generation model of the XPS 13 line. The laptop is available since October (pre-2017 model) in both a standard edition with Windows installed as well as both a pre-2017 model and a 2017 model (with insignificant hardware differences) Developer Edition with Ubuntu 16.04 "SP1" installed, featuring kernel 4.8 as of now. There is only minor hardware differences between them, mostly in regards to the mainboard microchip manufacturers. Just like the older versions (9333, 9343 and 9350) it is available in different hardware configurations as well. These fourth gen models includes Intel's Kaby Lake CPUs and advertised with up to 16GB LPDDR 1866 MHz RAM and a 1TB PCI SSD. It will now also be available in Rose Gold. Prior to previous information and current specifications available provided by Dell (at least to regular customers), it is not available with the 2133 MHz RAM speed. However, some models, including those available to employees and possibly Dell partners (and/or business customers), memory speed is indeed available up to 2133 Mhz LPDDR3 (non-upgradable). ref. The same mentioned models are also available with the Intel Core i7-7660U (aswell as i7-7560U) with the Intel 640 Iris Plus onboard graphics. Respective clock frequencies are 2.5 Ghz (up to 4GHz in Turbo-mode) and 2,4 Ghz (up to 3.8 Ghz), respectively.

The installation process for Arch on the XPS 13 does not differ from any other PC. For installation help, please see the Installation guide and UEFI. This page covers the current status of hardware support on Arch, as well as post-installation recommendations.

Content adaptive brightness control

In the XPS 13 the display panels (both FHD and QHD+) come with adaptive brightness embedded in the panel firmware, this "content adaptive brightness control" (usually referred to as CABC or DBC) will adjust the screen brightness depending on the content displayed on the screen and will generally be found undesirable, especially for Linux users who are likely to be switching between dark and light screen content. Dell has issued a fix for this however it is only available to run in Windows and for the QHD+ model of the laptop so this precaution should be taken before installing Linux, the FHD model of the XPS 13 (9360) cannot be fixed. This is not a problem with the panel but rather a problem with the way the panels are configured for the XPS 13, as the same panel exists in the Dell's Latitude 13 7000 series (e7370) FHD model but with CABC disabled. The fix is available directly from Dell.

NVM Express SSD

NVME Power Saving Patch

Andy Lutomirski has created a patchset which fixes power saving for NVME devices in linux. The patch was merged into mainline and manually compiling the kernel is not necessary anymore. Nevertheless the AUR package is still available for further use if desired.
Linux-nvme — Mainline linux kernel patched with Andy's patch for NVME power saving APST.

For some devices it might be necessary to set a higher value for the nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us parameter to enable all power saving states. This parameter has to be set on the kernel command line.

For the Toshiba 512GB SSD used in some models of the XPS 13 the value to enable all PS-States is 170000 (the combined latency of entering and leaving the highest power state, add nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=170000 to your kernel command line). For the 1TB SSD this valued should be increased to 180000 instead. To check if all states are enabled you can use the nvme-cliAUR package, which provides the nvme-cli command:

If the power states are enabled there should be values for ITPT and ITPS in the first entries. Also the ITPS-value of the last filled entry should be the highest power saving-state of the SSD (which can be viewed using smartctl -a /dev/nvme0 or nvme id-ctrl /dev/nvme0).

Video

The video should work with the i915 driver of the current linux kernel. Consult Intel graphics for a detailed installation and configuration guide as well as for Troubleshooting.

If you have the QHD+ (3200x1800) model, also check out HiDPI for UI scaling configurations.

Module-based Powersaving Options

The first argument is to enable modesetting if it's not set by default. The second argument is needed to active power-saving C-States. Higher values than 1 are not available for kaby lake CPUs. The third argument is for frame buffer compression power savings. These values should work well!

enable_guc_loading=1 enable_guc_submission=1

These arguments are used to enable GuC updates. GuC is a small proprietary binary blob released by intel to update the GuC binary in faster intervals than the kernel release does. It is used for graphics workload scheduling on the various graphics parallel engines. More details at (https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/firmware). The GuC binary for kaby lake is included since firmware release linux-firmware 20170217 in the official repository.

Enable psr level 2 is working, while level 1 has a lot of problems. Setting it on level 2 doesn't give much energy saving at the moment. It's said that 'disable_power_well=0 enable_psr=1' is working in this combination.

NOT WORKING: semaphores=1

The semaphore option is NOT working for kaby lake CPUs and won't enable even if you set the option to 1.

Wireless

The Killer 1535 Wirless Adapter is functional and the ath10k firmware is included in recent linux kernel versions. The connection speed reported by iw is limited to 1-6Mbits/s. However this is just the output being wrong. The real connection speed is not limited to this value.

Some users are experiencing issues, where the connection is dropped under heavy load but reconnects within a brief moment. This might not be noticed during browsing at all but becomes apparent in online games. There is no know solution so far.

Bluetooth

After following the instructions given at Bluetooth tethering of internet connections via phone works immediately.

Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.1

The USB-C port supports Thunderbolt 3, Displayport-over-USB-C and USB power delivery as well as USB 3.1.

Use of a power management package (such as TLP) may cause the ethernet adapter to repeatedly disconnect and reconnect. If this happens, disable/blacklist USB autosuspend for the ethernet adapter. (On my laptop, this is the device Bus 004 Device 007: ID 0bda:8153 Realtek Semiconductor Corp in the output of lsusb.)

Thunderbolt Firmware updates

The thunderbolt controller in the laptop has an embedded firmware. The laptop ships with firmware version NVM 18, and the most recent available version from Dell's website is NVM 21. If encountering compatibility problems with Thunderbolt accessories (such as the DA-200), the firmware may need to be updated. Dell maintains a Github repository explaining the process to update the firmware, but unfortunately, does not provide the updated payload files. These can be extracted from the Windows firmware update files. Mainline support for the firmware update process is pending the inclusion of these patches into the Linux kernel.

Here is a short list of steps to update the Thunderbolt-Firmware on linux 4.12+ (use at your own risk):

At this point, your screen should flickr a couple of time. Verify that the update is done by checking that authenticate returns 0

# cat /sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/0-0/nvm_authenticate

Verify the new nvme version (it should return 21.0)

# cat /sys/bus/thunderbolt/devices/0-0/nvm_version

Put the controller back in normal mode

# ./force_dell_tbt 0

SATA controller

When the SATA-controller is set to RAID On in Bios, the hard disk (at least the SSD) is not recognized. Set to Off or AHCI (AHCI is recommended) before attempting to install Arch.

Touchpad

The touchpad has no explicit buttons. The buttons are built into the pads surface. There is a small line printed on the pad separating left from right click button. The pad has a middle button built in! (works with libinput without any configuration): To issue a middle click, simply press on the middle area right between the virtual left and click buttons - so on the small printed separator line.

Remove psmouse errors from dmesg

If dmesg | grep -i psmouse returns an error, but your touchpad still works, then it might be a good idea to disable psmouse. First create a config file:

Hidden Keyboard Keys

There are additional Fn+<Key> (sequences) that are not marked at all on the keyboard but underlying hardware generates them anyway. Here they are (if you find more add them to the table below):

Hidden Fn Keys

Fn+<Key>

Resulting key (sequence)

Fn+Ins

XF86Sleep

Fn+Super_L

Super_R

Fn+B

Pause

Fn+R

Print

Fn+S

Scroll_Lock

Fn+A / D / E / F / G / T / Q / W

XF86Launch3

Firmware Updates

Dell provides firmware updates via fwupd. See Flashing BIOS from Linux#fwupd. Please note if you have used a bind mount partition for /boot, you will not be able to use the fwupd utility; Instead format a USB as FAT32 and put the bios update .exe on. Reboot into the one-time-boot menu and update the BIOS flash through there.

Alternatively, the BIOS update can be downloaded from the Dell website, and placed in a location accessible to the firmware. This could be the '/boot' folder, or a FAT32 formatted USB stick. Then restart your laptop and hit F12 while starting. In the boot menu choose firmware update and select the new file!

Troubleshooting

EFISTUB does not boot

The BIOS does not pass any boot parameters to the kernel. Use a UEFI boot loader instead.

Not waking from suspend

Update the BIOS to 1.0.7 to patch this issue.

Power Drain after waking from standby

Some users recognised ~2W more power consumption after waking up from standby. Go to the UEFI Firmware Settings (tap the F2 key when the Dell logo appears) and uncheck the 'Enable Thunderbolt Boot Support'. You may use powertop or powerstat-gitAUR to reproduce and check this behaviour yourself.

Popping sound on headphones/external speakers

Power saving being enabled on the audio chip will cause the hissing and popping to appear.

If you are using tlp, it will activate power saving by default when on battery. Edit /etc/default/tlp and disable it.

Coil Whine

Unfortunately Dell still did not fix this issue and the sound for my model was very loud. The issue seems to be connected to the graphic card. For some users, it is possible to reduce it a lot by activating frame buffer compression "enable_fbc=1" Intel graphics#Module-based Powersaving Options. The coil whine will then start again under heavy graphic load. For the touchscreen model, this may be very often, due to the high resolution screen. In a similar vein, the display can be run at a lower resolution, again reducing the load on the graphics card.

Fingerprint sensor

Dell officially does not support fingerprint reader functionality [2], however an effort on reverse engineering the protocol of Validity 138a:0090, 138a:0094, 138a:0097 fingerprint readers can be found at github [3].